Sunday, January 4, 2015

Quartz posts album trailer

Originating from Birmingham, England,
QUARTZ date back to 1974, and were considered to be at the forefront of the New
Wave Of British Heavy Metal. On January 31, 2015, Skol Records will release "Too
Hot To Handle" CD, which can be considered as a complete unreleased album from
back in the day, as it's a collection of 16 previously unreleased songs recorded
between 1981 and 1982. Some of those tracks were re-recorded in different
versions for the "Against All Odd's" album (1983), and some of them see the
light of the day for the first time ever.

QUARTZ released their first same titled
album, which was produced by Tony Iommi of BLACK SABBATH, on Jet Records in
1977. The band toured heavily during this time, playing the Reading Festival
three times (1976, 1977 and 1980) and touring with of some of the larger Heavy
Metal bands of the time, incl. IRON MAIDEN, SAXON, UFO and RUSH. Late 1979 saw
Geoff Nicholls leave the band to join the legendary BLACK SABBATH, providing
keyboards and songwriting for them for the next 24 years. Incidently in 1980
Malcolm Cope was approached by OZZY OSBOURNE to join his solo band, but
declined stating QUARTZ was his band, and they had just signed a deal with MCA
to record "Stand Up And Fight". 1983 brought the release of "Against All Odd's"
which had been partly written with vocalist David Garner, and the departing
Derek Arnold had been replaced by Steven McLoughlin. Prior to the final
recording of the opus, David Garner was replaced by Geoff Bate, whose vocals
appear on the album. During this period Malcolm Cope also joined the roll call
of QUARTZ members being called up to BLACK SABBATH, working on pre-production
demos for the "Born Again" album.

QUARTZ reformed in 2011, and the current
line up consist of: Geoff Nicholls on guitars and keyboards, Mick Hopkins on
guitars, Derek Arnold on bass, Malcolm Cope on drums, and vocalist David
Garner.